Spanish property sales up by 2.8 per cent in November

Slow-downs in Catalunya and the Balearics as the market recovery spreads to more regions

This Friday saw the publication by the government’s central statistics unit of the residential property sales data for the month of November 2018, showing that the total for the whole of the country during the month was 2.8 per cent higher than in the same month last year at 42,150.

That such a slight increase is reported may be due in part to the chaos and confusion regarding who should pay the tax on newly registered mortgages in October and November, but despite that the result is the tenth year-on-year rise in the first eleven months of 2018, the only exception having been when the figures were distorted in March by Easter falling earlier than in 2017. In addition, though, there remains a suspicion that the level of activity in the real estate market might be reaching a ceiling in some areas, especially those where the recovery in the market began soonest fallowing the crash which began in late 2007.

This can be seen in the breakdown of the figures by region: once again the Balearics and Catalunya were among the five regions where the figures fell (the others being Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Andalucía). This no doubt contributes to the fact that there is little in the way of a significant average price increase on a national scale, as activity becomes more intense in some the less expensive of the 17 Autonomous Communities: indeed, the most significant increases in the month were those reported in the relatively inexpensive regions of Cantabria (30.3 per cent), La Rioja (28.8 per cent) and Castilla-La Mancha (26.6 per cent).

However, as is so often the case, the region with most sales per 100,000 inhabitants of property-buying age during November was the Comunidad Valenciana, with a figure of 168.

Despite these factors, though, the overall trend remains an upward one, and in the first eleven months of 2018 the number of residential property sales registered in Spain reached over 481,000 following a rise of 10.6 per cent. Similarly, over the last twelve months the total stands at 513,431, having risen by 10.5 per cent over the last year and 75 per cent since the market bottomed out in February 2014: the figure is now at its highest since January 2009.

It should be pointed out that the October figures published by the central government’s statistics unit are lower than those released by the country’s notaries earlier in the week, which showed a total of over 47,000 but a year-on-year decrease of 3.6 per cent. The discrepancy is explained at least in part by the fact that the government’s data are gathered when transactions are inscribed at property registries, a formality which is often completed some time after the sale is finalized and the deeds signed before a notary